Summer of the Burning Sky Read online

  One man introduced them, a fellow prisoner who seemed to be in charge, named Archer. Late fifties, thick brown hair, whiskers, a lined face, but his body was lean and toned for a man his age. He barked a few orders, picked up a shovel, and started digging with the rest of the men.

  The fact they hadn’t been issued Pulaskis seemed like the right decision. The half axe, half scraper could do serious damage to a man’s skull, never mind the brush he might be trying to clear.

  Tucker had pointed out the objective to the crew—dig a line three feet wide down to the mineral soil and almost two hundred feet long.

  They dug in with the fervor of a bona fide hotshot crew.

  “Rule number six! Be alert. Keep calm. Think clearly. Act decisively!”

  Tucker worked alongside them—shouting directions when needed, stealing glances at them—and couldn’t help but wonder what they might be serving time for.

  Take, for example, the three dark-haired youths no more than twenty-one. DUIs? Maybe drug charges? They stuck together, grinning like they might be frat brothers of a different order.

  What about the clean-cut lawyer type with the brown hair and glasses? He looked like he’d taken the wrong turn out of some graduate school. What had he done—skipped on his taxes? Tucker tried to remember his name. Clancy, maybe?

  The slightly overweight redhead hardly seemed the type who landed in prison. Baby-faced and more determined than capable, he kept his head down and worked and didn’t emanate even the faintest bad-guy aura.

  And then there was the ex-military guy. Or at least he carried himself like a soldier—maybe a mercenary. He called himself Thorne. Short brown hair, thick beard, ruddy and bearlike, he kept his eyes down and stood away from the group, his arms folded, as if not looking for trouble.

  The only one Tucker pegged as a real criminal might be the dark-haired, pensive-eyed fighter who worked with the intensity of three men but wore suspicion in his gaze, watching the rest of the crew as if they might turn on him. A tribal tat inked the back of his neck and darkened his right arm in a nearly full sleeve, something faded, and a scar dissected his jaw near his ear. He even had a gangsta-type name—Rio.

  Yeah, Tucker might stay away from that guy.

  Which only knotted his gut because he knew a little what it felt like to be judged by his looks. And outside one night in the county jail, he’d never done real prison time, despite a few predictions by his teachers and one angry mother.

  “Take a water break!” Tucker yelled, walking over to the cubinators the helicopter had left behind. Barry had also dropped a gear box—a Fat Boy—with overnight supplies—a tarp, sleeping bags, MREs—but Tucker wanted the prisoners off his line before they bedded down.

  And there he went again, prejudging them. So far, the crew had worked with every bit of commitment as his own jumpers.

  But the last thing Tucker wanted was some sort of catastrophe, injury, or even a prisoner uprising.

  Maybe he’d seen too much television.

  Tucker walked up to Archer, who wiped his arm across his sweaty face after taking a drink. “Once we get across the meadow, we’re going to set a back burn. That means—”

  “I know what it means, Sport,” Archer said. “I used to fight fires, long before you were even a twinkle in your mother’s eye.” He winked at Tucker.

  Oh.

  “Have you called in a drop?” Archer said, his eyes watering. “Because if you throw down some mud along the right flank we could box ’er in.”

  “That’s what I was thinking,” Tucker said, not sure why he weirdly wanted this man to like him. Or why he wasn’t annoyed at his use of Sport. “They’re short on tankers, but Barry is trying to get a drop in. Hopefully he’ll have found one by the time we’re ready to burn.”

  Tucker noticed how Rio took his drink, stood off from the rest of the group, watching them. He gestured to the man with his chin. “What’s his story?”

  Archer took off his helmet, lifted his face to the sky and dribbled water on it, then shook his head. “I don’t know. He came in about a month ago. Got into a fight in the chow hall yesterday and spent last night in solitary.” He wiped his face with the arm of his shirt, glanced at Rio. “Perkins isn’t lenient about fighting, so I’m not sure how he got this gig.”

  Tucker glanced at Archer.

  “Don’t worry, kid. I’m watching him.”

  Again with a nickname, and Tucker placed it. The guy reminded him of his racing coach. Confident, easygoing, but a driver. The kind of man you could depend on.

  As if to prove it, Archer capped his canteen. “Okay, boys, back to work!”

  What could he be in the joint for?

  They reassembled and kept digging. The late afternoon was punctuated by grunts, the clang of metal against rock, the redolence of fresh, overturned earth mixed with the pungent odor of burning resin, smoke, and the occasional spray of embers where the line sparked and chewed at the boreal forest, some five hundred yards away.

  In the thick of it, flames climbed up black spruce and shot fire into the sky. Over it all bloomed a cloud of lethal smoke drifting down into the valley. The haze of the fire watered Tucker’s eyes, and he pulled up his bandanna to filter it away from his lungs.

  But the fire had slowed to a crawl, and with the long hours of daylight, they had plenty of time to put this baby to bed.

  He spent the next hour walking up and down the line, fielding updates from Skye, whose patience had stretched to a tight, resounding string after sitting lookout all day, given her terse, “Nothing’s changed, boss. Same wind speed, same humidity. Flame lengths short and tight.”

  “Just a bit longer, then I’ll get Romeo to spell you,” he said.

  “Whatever,” she responded, and clearly she’d fallen into a snit.

  Yeah, well, maybe he couldn’t quite get her scream out of his head, the way she’d frozen when her torch erupted. Skye normally knew how to keep her head.

  Something didn’t seem right in Skyeville, and he didn’t want that thing spilling over into his fire.

  The afternoon sun fell slowly, still above the claw of the mountains when he decided to hike up to the top of the ridge to get a good look at the progress along the right flank.

  The fire had chewed the growth slowly, but the layer of moss, pine, and resin conspired to turn the landscape into an oven, the resin acting as napalm, burning deep into the earth. It had latched onto a stand of spruce and lit it like a firebomb, the cinders blowing in the wind.

  He could almost feel it under his skin, and the air was beginning to tremble as the afternoon winds started to kick up.

  Even from two hundred feet away, the fire roared, crackled, hissed at him. Angry.

  Now. He needed to start the burn now, before the fire rounded up a head of steam and plowed them over.

  He got on the radio. “Riley, you get down the ridge and start the burn. Seth, you and Hanes and Eric, watch the flanks. Romeo—you spell Skye on watch. I’ll call in the drop to Barry.”

  Riley affirmed, and Tucker watched through his glasses as Riley trekked the hundred or so yards down the ridge to the fire line of the hand crew. He fired a torch and set the blaze, yelling at the men to watch for spot fires.

  The blaze caught, started a sweep toward the ridge.

  “Air Attack, Tucker, come in.”

  Barry’s voice hopped on the line. “I’ve got a bucket on the chopper. It’s the best we could do.”

  “Bring it in along the right flank and drop it near the head.”

  He turned, trying to spot the chopper. Burnt orange bathed the valley below him in the burnished light of late afternoon, and in the far distance, he made out a blue-gray lake. From it came the low whump-whump of a chopper swinging a bucket.

  Behind him, the brush fire chewed its way to the ridge, protected from the winds that might push it back.

  “Tucker, if that’s you I see, get out of there. You’re standing between the two fires.”

  Indeed. Em
bers started to drop around him, starting spot fires. He made his way along the flank and into a bald, unburnable area of rock and scree. “Drop it, Barry!”

  The water came down in a tsunami, and he ducked behind a tumble of boulders to avoid the splash. Barry dumped it right along the edge of the flames, cordoning off the flank, a perfect drop, just lipping the fire line. Tucker emerged from his hiding spot to watch the steam rise. He climbed back up to the top of the ridge.

  The front had rallied, edged closer to the ridge. Good. It would meet their burn and find that it was out of fuel. He got on the radio to Barry. “Can you get me another load along the northern flank, just to shut down any spurs that might try and escape?”

  “It’ll take me a bit, but hang on,” came the reply.

  Tucker turned to hike back toward his line when his foot slipped on a scree of rocks.

  He let out a word as his ankle turned, and he fell back, his knee twisting, pain spiking up his leg. He landed on his backside, rolled, and lay face up for a moment, the wind knocked out of him.

  Cinders fell on his face, bandanna, the fire hungry as it lapped up the moss and willow, chewing its way to the top of the ridge. He rolled over to his hands and good knee.

  The fire had seen his fall, gotten ambitious.

  He pushed to his feet and bit back another word. Of course it would be his left knee, nearly blinding him as pain ground into his bones. He grabbed his Pulaski, used it as a crutch, his eyes watering as the smoke turned the world black.

  Uphill was the wrong way to run, but he just had to get on top of the ridge, then down into the rocky, unburnable, recently doused terrain.

  Except tongues of fire burned at his neck, landing on his shirt. He batted away the ash, trying not to cough.

  Trying not to panic. But when he looked over his shoulder, the flames roared only twenty feet away.

  He bit down on his pain and took off at an awkward run.

  His knee buckled.

  He fell again and didn’t bother holding in a grunt. And when he scrambled back to his feet, his shout contained more anger than pain.

  How had this turned into a fight for his life so quickly?

  He stumbled forward, tripped again—and fell into someone’s strong embrace. He hadn’t a clue who, but his rescuer grabbed him hard around the waist and pulled him up to the top of the ridge, nearly running.

  At the top, his hero pulled his arm around his shoulder, held on, and scrambled into the wettened, bouldered escape area.

  “Get down!” Tucker said, and they hunkered behind a tumble of boulders.

  The fire crested over the ridge, an inferno on their tail, thirty feet away.

  “You okay?”

  Tucker stared at Rio, not a little stymied. The man wore the exertion of the afternoon on his skin—dirt, sweat, and the scum of ash. “What—how—?”

  “I was on this end of the burn and saw you go over the ridge.” Rio peeked over the edge of the boulder, watching the fire burn. “That was close.”

  “Mmmhmm,” Tucker said, not finding any other words.

  “I think it’s working—your plan.” Rio glanced down at Tucker. Then he offered a small, one-sided smile.

  Huh. “Yeah. The fires should collide, collapse in on themselves as all the fuel is consumed, and if we can hold this right flank, we’ll get to spend tomorrow mopping up.”

  Tucker finally let out a breath, aware of how close he’d come to not even deploying his shelter but burning to death right in front of his team. He turned around, sitting with his back to the boulder, reaching to knead his knee. “Thanks,” he said.

  Rio nodded, also turning his back to the fire. “Feels good.”

  “What?”

  “To win. I haven’t gotten a win for a long time.”

  Tucker didn’t know what to say to that, but before he could respond, a voice lifted from beyond the boulder, from the bottom of the hill.

  “I know you’re up there, and I just want you to know that if you try anything, I’m a federal marshal.”

  Huh?

  And shoot, but the choking smoke, the swelling pain in his knee, and the fact that he’d nearly been burned alive simply dropped away as—seriously?—Stevie Mills came charging up the slope, her weapon out, and wearing a look that had Rio glancing at him and raising his hands in surrender.

  Tucker wanted to get to his feet, to defend Rio, but instead he simply sat there, stunned. “Stevie?”

  She had tied her hair back in a ponytail, wore a blue windbreaker, and ran up the hill as if she might be on fire.

  “What are you doing here?” Tucker said, then glanced at Rio. “He’s not a threat.”

  She regarded Rio with a stern eye, then lowered her gun. “You can put your hands down. I’m not going to shoot you.”

  “I appreciate that,” Rio said.

  Tucker winced as he worked his way to his feet. “I don’t understand—what’s going on?”

  She tucked her gun away in her belt. “You have a murderer among your fire crew recruits. I’m here to bring him back.”

  He glanced at Rio.

  Who frowned. “It’s not me, dude.”

  “It’s Eugene March, the guy I told you about last night.”

  “Uh, there’s no one here named Eugene.”

  “Right—he’s going by Clancy Smythe.”

  “The professor?”

  She frowned at that. “Yeah. He’s murdered three people, along with a few other charges. Like rape.”

  Oh, just perfect. He shook his head. “Let’s keep March’s list of charges on the d-low,” Tucker said. “I don’t want to freak out the team. But, how soon can you get him off my line?”

  “As soon as I can get a chopper in here.”

  Which, given the smoke clutter, might be a while.

  Tucker leaned on his Pulaski, aware of the strange rush of adrenaline, the thunder of his heartbeat, and the wincing heat in his knee as he climbed down to her. The sun had brushed a spot on her nose, and she looked windblown.

  “How’d you get here?” Tucker asked.

  Rio hiked down beside him, as if to catch him. Tucker tried to let the pain blow through him. It wasn’t the first time he’d worked while hurt. He just needed an emergency ice pack and some ibuprofen.

  “I rode my dirt bike.” She gestured to an ancient-looking bike down the hill, out of the burn area.

  Huh. But he turned to her and grinned. “Well, welcome to my fire. I don’t suppose you brought supper.”

  “It’s a crazy kind of beauty, isn’t it?”

  Tucker sat down beside Stevie against a pile of boulders in their strike camp, and his voice sliced into her thoughts, the ones that centered on two problems.

  How did she keep Eugene from escaping under her nose?

  And just what did she do with the fact that her father sat ten feet away, his gaze flickering to her, hurt in his eyes?

  She didn’t blame her father. Not after the crazy, panicked exchange that occurred when she’d hiked up to the fire line with Tucker and Rio, the prisoner she’d thought just might be taking Tucker hostage.

  Whoops.

  But the criminal had put his hands on Tucker, dragging him down the hill, and that usually didn’t mean that said prisoner and hostage decided to be BFFs.

  Usually. To hear Tucker tell it, Rio had snatched him out of the flames of death, but Stevie wasn’t taking her eyes off the guy.

  Well, mostly. When she didn’t have her gaze pinned to Eugene, that was.

  But before that, she’d had to figure out how to keep her father from getting in the middle of the entire mess.

  To be honest, she’d nearly broken out into a run, taken by the urge to fling herself into his strong arms, so shaken by seeing him. His ash-black face, dirt-strewn and sweaty, his body still lean and strong—Archer Mills was every inch the hero she remembered.

  She’d wanted to weep when he looked up, his brown eyes landing on her, so much shock and crazy joy in his expression, she wanted
to believe her mother’s words. He misses you.

  Dad.

  He’d opened his mouth as if to say her name, and frankly, blow her very fragile cover, and her brain had kicked in. “Deputy Mills, from the US Marshal’s office.” She gave him the tiniest shake of her head, then addressed the cadre of prisoners, who were tending the grass fire whipping in the wind. “In case any of you think that you’re going to make for the hills, I’m here to make sure you finish your work and head back to the Copper County facility as soon as possible.”

  And that had cut off any reunion with the effectiveness of a slap. The light in her father’s eyes had died, and he’d nodded, turning away from her.

  She hated herself then. More. Hated herself more. And now, as he sat away from her, not acknowledging her, she longed to tell him the truth. She missed him too.

  But if Eugene knew Archer Mills was her father, the real criminal might use him as leverage. Might make her choose between the law and her father.

  Again.

  So she took a breath and glanced at Tucker. The smokejumper had amazing eyes, and when he looked at her, his face still sweetly grimy, his dark brown hair poking from a red bandanna, and a layer of grizzle and ash on his face, he resembled some ethereal dragon slayer.

  “What—?” she asked in reference to his crazy kind of beauty comment.

  “The fire against the aurora borealis.” He nodded to the darkening horizon. The blaze, although stopped by the burnout when it had crested the ridge, still fought for life north of the ridge, an orange glow and flicker that rent the shadows of the crimson night. Behind it glowed the arching lime green light off the polar cap. Smoke drifted off the fire in a haze.

  “Fire settles down at night as the humidity in the air rises. We’ll be safe here, but I’ll keep watch,” Tucker said. “Hopefully it’ll die in the night, but if not, we’ll put her down in the morning, do some mop-up, and we can call in the chopper and send the hand crew home.”

  “You mean back to prison.”

  He nodded. Glanced at her. “Funny. The one guy who I pegged as a criminal turned out to be a hero.”